‘Frae my ain countrie’: Robert Burns in the Archive of Jean Redpath

Scottish singer Jean Redpath first made her name in the folk music revival sweeping 1960s America. In her clear and expressive mezzo-soprano, she brought her own Scottish folk-song repertoire, at the heart of which was the works of Robert Burns. Jean's career would be spent living and working between the USA and Scotland, continually adding through her own research and teaching to the range of Burns materials she recorded and performed on both sides of the Atlantic. Following her death in 2014, her extensive archives were bequeathed to the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Robert Burns Studies and the University of South Carolina’s Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections Drawing on Burns-related content of those archives, this chapter explores Jean’s relationship with the bard – the breadth and depth of her work – to understand better the nuance of his songs, the various contexts within which she recorded those songs including a project conceived with Serge Hovey to record Burns’s entire catalogue, and the impact of her career on the placement of Burns as a central figure in both national and international folk song traditions.